The invention relates to a system and method for optically scanning and measuring an environment, and in particular, to a system and method for generating a display image from a point cloud.
Metrology devices, such as laser scanners for example, may generate large volumes of coordinate data of points located on the surfaces of the scanned area. These types of devices may be used to generate three-dimensional models of an area, such as a home or building, a crime scene, or an archeological site for example. Often with these types of scans, the data may be acquired from multiple positions to capture all of the desired surfaces and avoid having blank areas where a surface was in the “shadow” of another object. As a result in several data-sets of coordinate data are generated that are registered together to define a single data-set, sometimes colloquially referred to as a “point cloud” since the data is represented as a group of points in space without surfaces.
It should be appreciated that from a graphical display of a point cloud, it may be difficult to visualize the surfaces of the scanned area. This is due to the close proximity of points (from any user point of view) within the point cloud that may lie on different planes. For example, if the user point of view of the point cloud is looking down on a table, there will be points within the field of view from the table surface, along with the floor that is underneath the table surface or even the surface on the underside of the table.
Where the point cloud is relatively dense, meaning that the points on a surface are dense, the generation of surfaces in the displayed image for visualizing the scanned area may be created, albeit computationally intensive. However, in some applications, the point cloud may have a lower density of points resulting in gaps in the data set between the points of the point cloud. As a result, it may be difficult to generate a desired displayed image.
Accordingly, while existing metrology devices and point cloud display systems are suitable for their intended purposes the need for improvement remains, particularly in providing a system for filling in pixels on a graphical display to generate a displayed image of a point cloud.